writing mentors

I picked my college in New York for one main reason: I had heard about a young, amazing creative writing teacher there I wanted to study with. That was the smartest decision of my life. I took every course she taught, writing or literature, and she mentored me both as a writer and a teacher.

Her style was remarkable: she was funny, relaxed, had a high tolerance for what might seem like chaos to some people. I remember once a professor from another class actually complained that we were too boisterous in her class. We were just having fun.

I found her consistently, quietly determined to bring out the best in her students. She was never censorious or arrogant, and in workshops she somehow managed to help us revise our fiction without turning it into something different. Without making it like what she thought it should be.

For the last six years I’ve been teaching creative writing again at Michigan State University as a guest and I’ve had wonderful, smart, talented students–and been lucky to do independent study or senior theses with some of them. Even better, I got to teach a six-week summer program for MSU students in London. The writing class blended fiction and creative non-fiction and the focus was writing about difference, examining themselves as Americans in London and also studying English culture as outsiders.

We read Bill Bryson’s hilarious book about England, Notes from a Small Island along with Miranda Seymour’s powerful memoir Thrumpton Hall and Val McDermid’s expert collection of short stories Stranded. Both Seymour and McDermid were able to visit the class and talk about their work, which was a unique experience for all of us.

We faced some obstacles. London underwent a heat wave, and our classroom was cramped, airless, and on the broiling west side of a building whose lawn was occasionally the scene of noisy events nobody warned us about. Acquiring a fan proved to be impossible. Don’t ask me why. We even had to deal with power drilling and hammering in the basement below us at one point. But the students were good-humored. More than that, they were inventive, supportive, hard-working, talented–and there were only sixteen of them. That’s close to an ideal size for a creative writing class. It allowed them to bond quickly around their writing and get to know each other’s styles and strengths intimately.

I encouraged everyone to take risks in their work, sharing times in my career when I did so myself, and I watched students develop astonishingly in the short weeks we had together. Some of them told me afterwards I inspired them, but they inspired me, twice, to write short pieces that I shared with them.

When it was over, I felt grateful that I’d had a writing mentor in college who had modeled dedicated, patient, relaxed, non-bullying work with students. And modeled not changing what your students write but doing your best to bring it into fuller bloom. That isn’t easy. You have to be present, focused, and aware–but it’s amazingly rewarding, and an amazing high when it goes well.

My mother was a teacher In Brussels after WW II, and when I met a group of her former students while doing research there for a book, they told me that sometimes she would get so excited in class that she would just hug herself with delight. I know exactly how she felt.

Lev Raphael is the author of 25 books in many genres, including the guide for writers, Writer’s Block is Bunk. You can take creative writing workshops with him online at writewithoutborders.com.“Studying creative writing with Lev Raphael was like seeing Blade Runner for the first time: simply incredible.”
—Kyle Roberts, MSU Class of 2016

A friend publishing her first book just got a negative review on Amazon, but it’s the only really bad one among about two dozen positive reviews. And lots of those were raves.

I told her it was a mistake to read bad reviews. Ever.

Years ago, way before Amazon, when I heard Philip Roth give a talk, he was asked about his reviews during Q&A. If you don’t know know his work and his history, he’s been attacked for all sorts of things–including anti-Semitism!–as far back as his short story collection Goodbye Columbus.

I remember being struck by his response. He said that he had never really learned anything about his work from a reviewer. I’m sure some people in the audience thought he was arrogant to say that, and Roth had the air of a dyspeptic hawk, so that might have added to the impression.

But my friend’s distress about her negative Amazon review made me reflect about my own review history. It includes raves from The New York Times Book Review–as well as some really nasty attacks that I wish I’d never read.

Over several decades of hundreds of reviews in print and on line, by professionals and amateurs, I don’t recall learning much, either, about my work from what they wrote. People have liked or disliked my books for various reasons in various ways. I’ve been thrilled by raves, enjoyed the pats on the back, and been disappointed by pans: “Don’t they get what I was trying to do?”

But have reviews made me write differently, tackle different subjects, change anything major or even minor?

Not really. The many fine editors I’ve worked with have been the ones who’ve had a lasting impact on me; they’ve challenged me and helped me deepen my work.

As for Amazon reviews–like those on Goodreads–they can often be mindless and cruel, sometimes little more than cyber farts.

Reviews can reflect different tastes or simply contrariness, as when people feel the need to trash great authors like Jane Austen or George Eliot. A full 10% of the 644 people reviewing Middlemarch on Amazon gave it only one or two stars. Obviously not fans of Victorian fiction or her brand of it, anyway. Perhaps they might have liked it better with zombies.

One of my favorite staycations was taking a week off from everything to re-read Middlemarch a few years ago and I was even more blown away than the first time I read it in college. I’m in awe of that novel, the world it creates, the depth of her psychology, and the author’s all-encompassing love for every one of her characters, even the deeply flawed ones.

You can’t and won’t please everyone as an author. But you can please yourself by avoiding the bad reviews. They’re not likely to make a difference in your work because they seldom offer constructive criticism–but they can make you waste time. You can obsess about them and even make the mistake of replying, something authors should avoid because it makes them look cranky and vulnerable.

To truly grow as a writer you need to find writing mentors or colleagues who can really help you, and you need to keep reading widely, deeply, passionately. Bad reviews should never be on your list.